Free Material Girls by Elaine Dimopoulos

sound like fun?”
    I stared at my plate of food and shrugged. “It’s sort of fun to be drawing again,” I muttered. It was—I had to admit it. I had gotten into the habit of bringing a short pile of paper home each day in case I got an idea while I was sitting in front of the television after dinner. Sometimes the shows inspired me. I could build off the featured trends—add sleeves, or change a hem length, or create a purse that would match a dress some character was wearing. I rolled my eyes one night when I saw one of the Carlottas from
Clone Valley
stomp across the screen in Tess Peterson’s yeti boots. That was one trend I wouldn’t touch.
    â€œThat’s the spirit, honey,” said my father heartily. Karen shot him a chilly stare. It was in moments like these that I really, really wished my parents had been able to have more than one child. From his nervous budgeting at the kitchen table these days, Walter probably wished the same thing. I felt bad for him—and for my mother. But I didn’t see how quitting could help anything.
    Fortunately, I had Braxton. He had been totally decent through the whole debacle. The day after I’d been demoted, he bought me the sweetest teddy bear with a satin bow. Although Sabrina no longer joined us, we still rode into work together almost every day. On weekends, we vegged at his place—him playing Larceny IX and me sketching clothes while we ate his mom’s latest seven-layer-dip experiment. Braxton told me he’d support me if I stayed on as a drafter or if I quit, either way. It was hard, though, to hear him talk about the court battles at Denominator. I missed my own battles with the Torro judges, even the ones that ended in defeat.
    I couldn’t get used to the nasty basement coffee, though. After I finished my latte from home each day, I got by without a refill.

    It came as a huge surprise to me that Vivienne was the best artist among our little group. I was sure her sketches would be picked frequently—if she actually sketched clothing. Half the time she drew random objects, or did a portrait of someone at the table. Sometimes she didn’t draw but filled her paper with words. Her writing was so cramped and she hunched over the sheet so secretively that I never saw what she wrote.
    Felix had nearly as much artistic talent as Vivienne. His problem was that he refused to compromise his rough, distressed aesthetic. He ignored the current direction of trends and designed clothes that looked like
nothing
anyone was wearing. He pretended not to care and always scowled as Winnie passed by with the pile of selected sketches under her arm. Still, I had a hunch that he held out a little bit of hope each time. When a biker jacket of his was finally selected, he rolled his eyes and said, “I’m off—another exercise in futility!” But he didn’t fool me. I watched him stroll to the elevator with a small spring in his step.
    Kevin, Dido, and Randall had the opposite problem: they tended to play it safe. Again and again, I realized how tough a drafter’s job was. To be good, you had to hit the center of this continuum—nothing too radical, nothing too familiar—every time.
    Not that I planned to get stuck in a rut like Felix, but I started to think about my own design aesthetic. As a judge, I’d needed to keep an open mind to different styles, but now I was free to develop my own. Maybe it was all the time I was spending in the park outside my apartment avoiding Karen, but nature kept influencing me. A hummingbird whizzed nearby—and I sketched a blouse with wispy, translucent fabric. The rain dampened the ground one afternoon, and I came up with a mossy-textured scarf. A black cat skittered under the bushes, and I submitted a strapless dress with puma sleekness.
    And then one day, four weeks after I had begun in the basement and one week after I’d really started submitting